


Final Greg

by telekinetics



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Final Girl Psychology, M/M, accidentally ended up writing this in the way greg talks which adds 2 the ambience i think, i guess, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24263770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinetics/pseuds/telekinetics
Summary: If Waystar Royco was a horror movie, then, well, Greg knows he wouldn’t be the final girl. But he thinks it would be pretty subversive if he was.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	Final Greg

**Author's Note:**

> quick disclaimer that I don’t actually know shit about final girls and Ive seen like 2 horror movies and I kinda just wanted an excuse to have Greg be a little bitch

If Waystar Royco was a horror movie, then, well, Greg knowshe wouldn’t be the final girl. 

But he thinks it would be pretty subversive if he was, mainly because everybody around him seems to think they would be the final girl. Every last one of these—to borrow a phrase— _corporate fucks_ lives convinced the glass slipper is theirs and they’re the surefire winner. Or, like, okay, that’s kind of a genre-mixer, but every single goddamn person in that building oozes with the confidence of those desperate to be the sole survivor. The successor. But, but Greg’s not thinking about the line of succession right now, no, Greg’s thinking about being the final girl. Or just the idea of a final girl in general. There’s no correlation. He isn’t as transparently power-obsessed as everybody around him, not enough to fixate on something like that. Sort of. 

Anyway. The obvious answer is Shiv—not, not because she’s the only girl, that would be a gross overgeneralization, Greg’s not a misogynist or anything, but because, you know, she unequivocally has Final Girl Energy. She’s capable, she’s focused, she’s—she’s kinda fucking ruthless. He doesn’t know too much about Shiv (to be fair, he doesn’t know too much about any of them, and they don’t know shit about him), but she’s the type of person who thinks she’s the final girl. She’s the type of person who would probably get Final Girl on a Buzzfeed quiz.

(Greg is assigned The First Death, because everything that happens to him reads like a cosmic Fuck You from the Capitalist Deities.)

Roman wouldn’t be the final girl. He would certainly think of himself as final girl-esque, but Roman isn’t enough of a protagonist, archetype-wise, to really live until the end. Greg thinks Roman would put up a decent fight. He’d probably last at least halfway through the movie, twistedly endearing himself to the audience in the process, and his death would be exactly like him, half comedy half tragedy, the weird culmination of almostreaching your potential, but not quite. Greg can practically see it: Roman, brazenly playing whack-a-mole with whatever Horror Movie Entity they’re fighting; convinced he knocked the thing out, he’d get cocky, brag a little, hype himself up, and then BAM! or BANG! or whatever noise Horror Movie Entities make when they pluck your head off your neck like it’s a party favor and your body’s a toothpick. And then Shiv and Kendall would scream, and one of them would go to town on the Thing, would keep hitting and slicing and fighting ‘till long after it was dead, and the other, aggrieved, would have to hold them back and tell them to _stop, Jesus Christ, it’s over, you did it_. And of course it wouldn’t _really_ be over, but they would oblige, stopping, eyes dead, elegantly shattered or about to shatter, like a glass of wine tipping over the porcelain counter: slippery with something dark red and menacing but just—on the brink of breaking, and completely fucking empty. 

That would probably be Kendall. 

Greg has to admit that, out of the three Roy children (he isn’t counting Connor because Connor would either (a) flee the country or (b) get himself killed by something unrelated to the plot), Kendall is probably the final girl. But, well, that isn’t much fun. Because Kendall wouldn’t make a particularly triumphant sole survivor. In a movie where Kendall’s the final girl, the whole horror aspect serves as a psychological allegory for whatever it is that makes Kendall seem so sunken-in most of the time. Greg has a feeling that a Kendall Roy Horror Movie would be excruciatingly redundant; Greg has a feeling Kendall’s his own worst nightmare. It’s not that he doesn’t like Kendall—really, he does a lot, actually, Kendall’s the reason he’s not homeless, and Greg got him bad park coke once. They’re tight. But sometimes Greg looks at him and it’s almost like he can see Kendall shutting down and going on autopilot, as if he’s convinced nobody can tell the difference. Hell, maybe the others can’t, God, everybody around him is so fucking self involved, but, then again, it’s not as though Greg is actively doing anything to help Kendall come alive again—but, like, it isn’t his place. Really, it’s just weird to see somebody like Kendall, who knows how to take charge, knows how to command a room, knows how to do all these things Greg can only guess at, it’s _weird_ seeing Kendall Roy have these moments where he just checks out. Greg’s instinct has always been to make himself smaller, but with Kendall it doesn’t seem like instinct, it reads more like defeat, and Greg isn’t sure what to do with that. There isn’t really anything he _can_ do. 

All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that Kendall always looks like he’s not entirely in his own body, like he’s one unheard _to be or not to be_ away from stepping off the side of a building, and Greg can appreciate a good emotional piece—diversifying the horror genre is important—but it just doesn’t seem like the answer he’s looking for. Maybe that’s callous, but, hey, everyone thinks he needs thicker skin anyway.

(What’s really callous is the fact that Greg’s pretty sure everybody can tell Kendall’s become a zombie. They just don’t give a fuck.

Morally, Greg’s doing fine.)

Obviously, the original final girl is Logan. Unkillable, perched disapprovingly on his throne. Except the final girl can’t also be the monster, and Greg’s pretty sure Logan’s the monster in this situation. Which brings him back to psychological allegories, emotionally deprived childhoods, potential abuse?, etc. 

(Really, if Logan’s the monster, and the final girl is a metaphor for the future CEO, then none of the Roy children come out of this victorious; there’s no winning when you’re fighting to take the place of the Big Bad Wolf. The Roys are each the protagonist in their respective eyes, but what kind of fucking protagonist stabs their enemy and then decides to become the killer themselves? But that’s almost too philosophical for Greg. He digresses.)

If Logan’s the monster, then Shiv can’t be the final girl—out of all of them, she’s the most like him. Which is a thought that both amuses and frightens him, because on the one hand he always thinks _oh, it’s like Tom is married to Girl Logan_ , but on the other hand it makes him think _oh, Tom is married to Shiv,_ and that’s when Greg’s head starts to get kinda fuzzy, like when he was much younger, and in class, and he couldn’t focus on the math exam in front of him, and everything was suddenly so present he couldn’t really handle it. 

There are parallel truths to most situations, and Greg’s able to ignore them when they aren’t right in his face like that. He’s easily distracted, which used to weigh him down far more than he ever let on, but he considers it almost a kind of superpower now, because he’s made some pretty bad decisions, and he’s a naturally nervous guy—but he can be distracted from whatever’s going on, most of the time, if it isn’t actively happening in front of him. Like, sure, sometimes he has physical reminders of potential illegal activity shoved in his pockets, and sometimes he catches someone giving him one of those _looks_ like they think he’s only there for their personal entertainment (and Greg’s used to that, of course he is, but it always throws him a little; he can hardly ever pinpoint what it is about him that makes him seem so ridiculous to everybody else), and that’s always tough and all-consuming. But then Tom will chase him down, smile bordering on suppressed mania, and he’ll say something that makes Greg feel like Tom’s an alien and Greg is normal and that always helps, and it doesn’t make him feel bad, because Greg’s pretty sure Tom feels like _he’s_ normal and Greg’s the alien, so, in that sense, at least, their relationship is pretty symbiotic. 

Tom. Tom is definitely not the final girl. No, Tom wants that kind of status too badly. Tom wants everything too badly. The final girl doesn’t set out to be the final girl, the final girl just _is_ the final girl. And Tom never just _is_ anything. Everything Tom is, he doesn’t want to be, he denies, he refuses. Tom has a natural way of thinking and feeling and being; Greg’s pretty certain that none of them have ever actually seen it in action. Just like Greg’s pretty certain that Tom has spent his whole life killing parts of himself off for the sake of—what? Ambition? Desire? What the fuck does he want? The company? That’s what he would say, if pressed. But it’s a more Shiv-shaped animal of a situation, all those times when Tom yells at him and kicks him when he’s down then turns around and looks at him with those fucking desperate for approval eyes and says things like _are you breaking up with me, Greg?_ and, God, he’s so fucking transparent sometimes that Greg just wants to laugh in his face, just wants to do _something_ to take back the control, but that would upset the natural balance of things, and he could say it’s for Tom’s sake, but something inside Greg needs whatever it is they have too. Besides, nothing that Greg wants ever comes to fruition, anyway. At least him and Tom have that in common. Greg wants to be taken seriously and Tom wants to be taken seriously, except what Tom really wants is for Shiv to love him and, perhaps more importantly, he wants to love Shiv, but Greg would never bet on either of those losing dogs. Greg would never bet on any of Tom’s desires. Tom wouldn’t let him. Tom would be too embarrassed. Tom just wants to be loved. 

It’d be kind of horrifying if Tom was the final girl, actually. If he was the last person left standing. Nobody around to praise him, to say _hey, man, good job!_ , or to nod approvingly in his direction. The final girl is a hero, but life would never just _let_ Tom be a hero. There’d be a catch, and the catch would mean that he’d be completely fucking alone, and, well, Tom would probably shoot himself then and there, because if there’s nobody around then there’s nobody to perform for, and although Greg has an inkling Tom tries hard not to think about death, he’d choose it over self-analyzation in a heartbeat.

The thought makes his head fuzzy again. He has a tendency to get in too deep, not just with stuff like this, but with everything, like there’s something in his brain that can’t filter out what’s important from what isn’t. Most days, Greg feels like the world needs to be properly dulled before he can start being a real person, but whenever he starts being a real person it’s like everybody else is a different brand of real person than he is. Does that make him any less real? No, Greg doesn’t think so. Greg knows he’s real. Greg feels real. Nobody else really treats him like he’s real and he accepts that, sure, but he still feels real. 

Real isn’t the right word. Real is confusing. What Greg means is he doesn’t feel different from anybody else. And he doesn't know what it is that marks him down as such. And he doesn’t know why he doesn’t know. 

He’s different from Tom in that sense, too. Tom seems aware that there’s something deeply wrong with him. Tom is always actively trying to hide whatever that something is. As opposed to Greg, who… isn’t. Not really. He doesn’t feel the need to act like a different person, he just needs everyone to see him as who he actually is, and then, like, they’d like him more, and take him seriously and such. Sure, Greg finds it hard to be Greg sometimes. But Greg doesn’t hate himself. 

Tom hates himself. Tom hates himself so much it’s palpable. Tom hates himself so much he married a woman he knows doesn’t love him, Tom hates himself so much he self-sabotages religiously, Tom hates himself so much he tampers down every genuine and good instinct that Greg knows he has, hates himself so much that he wakes up every day and routinely kills the sweet little midwestern Boy Scout weeping and pounding on the inside of his chest cavity. (Sometimes Greg wishes he knew that little midwestern Boy Scout, but he thinks Tom’s a sad enough person without the added context of who he could have been plaguing their consciences.) 

Tom hates himself so much that all he wants is to be seen as a serious person and yet he somehow manages to go to these great lengths to ensure everything about him is resolutely absurd. Tom hates himself—and if Greg is being completely, Hand-to-God honest, it isn’t hard to see why. Tom is strange, and sycophantic, and weirdly sadistic, and pretty shitty, but also kind of kind. The kind of kind that’s kind of a death sentence in their world. And Greg worries that Tom would sell him out in a heartbeat, that Tom doesn’t care about him at all, but he also can’t forget the Tom that withstood a truly disgusting amount of humiliation from Logan Roy’s Boar on the Floor routine solely because he didn’t wanna give Greg up. That’s the crazy, awful part about Tom: Greg gets him, but he can’t predict him. There’s the Tom that will earnestly meet Greg’s eyes and squeeze Greg’s arm after openly protecting him with no ulterior motives. There’s also the Tom that hysterically throws water bottles at Greg with terrifying vigor. It’s the exact same Tom. Greg can’t keep up. He isn’t sure he wants to. There are days where all Greg wants is to get away from Tom. There are days where all Greg wants is to ask Tom why Greg’s the only person who can make him smile. The problem is that these are usually the same days. 

Tom isn’t the final girl. Things don't happen to Tom, Tom happens to himself. Although, by that logic, Greg isn’t the final girl either: things don’t happen to Greg. Tom happens to Greg. 

But Greg knows he’s not the final girl. So it’s fine. 

Except. Except Greg knows he’d be a decent fucking final girl. He’s got all the fucking makings of the fucking final girl. He’s a perceived outsider, he’s a definite underdog, he’s not above being self-serving but he still tries to do right by people, mostly, and he’s a Roy but he’s not a _Roy_ Roy. Nobody sees him coming. The monster, or the asshole with the knife, or the head of the company, Logan fucking Roy himself—none of them see him fucking coming. Greg’s the motherfuckin’ snake in the grass! The secret weapon! He’s the Machiavellian little fuck!

Kendall’s a Pyrrhic victory. Shiv’s a cliché. Roman’s comic relief. Logan’s a monster. Connor’s dead on arrival. And Tom isn’t a contender. Tom is irrelevant.

Greg could win. None of them would believe it for a second, but Greg could fucking win this whole thing. 

Theoretically. Obviously. Like, if this was _Scream 5: Waystar Royco_ , starring Waystar Royco and produced by Waystar Royco. Then, maybe, Greg could win this whole thing. On the silver screen, where it really counts. Not here, not in the real world. Like. Would it be worth it?

Yeah, probably.

Maybe none of the Roys survive. Maybe all of them do. Greg is surprised to find that he kinda doesn’t really give a shit. 

Then again, they don’t really give a shit about him, so, whatever, you know?

He still feels a little bad about thinking that, but not as much he once would’ve. No. Greg thinks he’s a pretty quick study. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I die anyway here's my [twitter](https://twitter.com/reuvenmaIter) and my [tumblr ](https://60skirk.tumblr.com) and my [playlist where I appropriate music for women to be about Tom Wambsgans](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7iUCEjeXLZRRM2cKlWK9kp?si=e0l5Vr_3TdGwMoGlxAM6aw)


End file.
